Noita! A wizardly 2D dungeon crawler without compare, in both good and deranging ways. Man, it feels like only yesterday I equipped something without looking and suddenly everything that damaged me caused me to teleport at random. I flew through entire levels this way like a Tardis set to shuffle, bumbling into one enemy posse after another, granted a few seconds at a time to assess my surroundings before the sorcery swept me deeper.
Behind me, meanwhile, whole layouts exploded as lakes of pixelated lava, acid and other substances which I’d nudged in passing overflowed and combined and transformed. Noita! Heaven help us all, they’ve released a big new update, after all these years.
As detailed on Steam, it adds a whole bunch of magic with terrifying names like “giga white hole”, “sparkly bounce” and “amazing golden spell”. Further into the changelog, there are ambiguous promises/threats such as “A little surprise for the turophiles” and “Dupe around and find out”. What the hell is going on down there? If you’d like to find out, the game is 60% off on Steam to mark the update’s release.
The update kills old Noita save games, sadly, though you can still finish an existing run by accessing a new Steam beta branch called “update_20240214”. In return for the heroic martyrdom of your save games, you’ll get eight modifier spells, six new enemies, three new secret spells, a new biome, a utility box, three new bosses, and more besides.
“When it comes to chaos, no game does it better than Noita,” our Graham wrote in his 2020 review. I heartily concur. “Noita is very good even if you are very bad at it,” our Alice B wrote of the early access build. I heartily concur again. This is the game’s second “final” update – the last one added “rage-fuelled levitation”. Only Baldur’s Gate 3 does this kind of thing better, I reckon.
Those patch notes, without further ado. Or at least, half of them. There’s also a tidal wave of bugfixes – excerpt: “Vaihdosmestari can no longer move cursed rock” – and a colossal quantity of new modding features that I don’t feel equipped to assess.
GENERAL
FEATURE: Spell – Sparkly bounce
FEATURE: Spell – Lightning bounce
FEATURE: Spell – Vacuum bounce
FEATURE: Spell – Null shot
FEATURE: Spell – Inner spell
FEATURE: Spell – Giga white hole
FEATURE: Spell – True orbit
FEATURE: Spell – Hookbolt
FEATURE: Spell – Anti homing
FEATURE: Spell – Holy lance
FEATURE: Added 8 modifier spells
FEATURE: Added 6 new enemies
FEATURE: Added 6 new spells
FEATURE: Added 3 new secret spells
FEATURE: Added new rare materials
FEATURE: Added chemical reactions
FEATURE: Added new small biome
FEATURE: Item – Utility box
FEATURE: Potion reactions
FEATURE: Audio is muted when unfocusing the game if “Pause the game when unfocused” is On
FEATURE: Amazing golden spell
FEATURE: 3 new bossfights
FEATURE: Added a new creature
FEATURE: New materials and reactions
FEATURE: New secret quest
FEATURE: Added a new easter egg
UPDATE: Dupe around and find out
UPDATE: Better interaction with No Wand Tinkering and Tinker With Wands Everywhere perks
UPDATE: Lukki Minion is slightly more powerful
UPDATE: Spells can now be dropped from inventory at all times
UPDATE: Spell drop rates rebalanced
UPDATE: Explosive bounce’s radius increased
UPDATE: Shiny Orb is now more lucrative
UPDATE: Moved a boss into a slightly more accessible spot
UPDATE: Adjusted various spell mana costs and prices
UPDATE: Adjusted weakness modifiers
UPDATE: Updated the look of the Hiisi Alchemist’s potions
UPDATE: Potion content percentages are displayed now (Thank you Evaisa)
UPDATE: Vomiting now requires eating a bit more nasty materials
UPDATE: Buffed Vampirism
UPDATE: A little surprise for the turophiles
UPDATE: Audio – new sounds for [REDACTED], glue, eldritch portal, freezing gaze, barrier & wall spells
UPDATE: Audio – bzzzt
UPDATE: Audio – new sound for [REDACTED]
UPDATE: Audio – new music for a few side areas
UPDATE: Powder pouches have a new functionality
UPDATE: New enemies show their statuses in the UI
UPDATE: Visual, audio and other fx when moving very fast
UPDATE: Tele bolt resets caster’s vertical velocity
UPDATE: Less harsh sound for tele bolt for more pleasant tele spamming experience
UPDATE: Improved camera tracking when moving fast
UPDATE: Lukki Minion should no longer be killable to make it more useful
UPDATE: Optimized file system performance when using mods
UPDATE: Optimized performance of some game effect queries in various systems
UPDATE: All bosses use final boss style health bars
UPDATE: Added up to date localizations
